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Heavily touted as a would-be bestseller, The Innocents Club has a lot going for it. There's a smart, sexy heroine, Mariah Bolt, whose unhappy childhood as the abandoned daughter of a famous writer revered by millions (including the Russian people) hasn't stopped her from moving right along in her career as a CIA analyst. There's Los Angeles society matron Renata Hunter, who stole Ben Bol... More

Heavily touted as a would-be bestseller, The Innocents Club has a lot going for it. There's a smart, sexy heroine, Mariah Bolt, whose unhappy childhood as the abandoned daughter of a famous writer revered by millions (including the Russian people) hasn't stopped her from moving right along in her career as a CIA analyst. There's Los Angeles society matron Renata Hunter, who stole Ben Bolt away from his family and then left him to die in penury. She now guards the legacy of her own father, a multimillionaire industrialist whose ties to the Soviet Union are legendary (think Armand Hammer). There's Paul Chaney, a slick, ambitious newscaster (think Peter Jennings) who has designs on Mariah, as well as a secret connection with Renata. And there's Frank Tucker, a CIA agent who's been buried in the dead document basement since Jack Geist, his nemesis in the agency, clawed his way to the top of the intelligence bureaucracy. Finally, there's a famous, revered, conveniently dead Russian literary lion (think Chekhov) who may have smuggled a manuscript to the late Ben Bolt, pages the Soviet bureaucracy couldn't afford to have published, then or now. It all comes together in Southern California, where a world conference featuring a Russian prime minister desperately trying to retain his power is the setting for a clever novel about revenge, betrayal, and intrigue. Readers of Taylor Smith's first novel, Guilt by Silence, will be delighted to encounter Mariah Bolt again. New readers are in for a well-plotted, fast-paced thriller that provides a nice twist on international intrigue. Mariah's efforts to come to terms with the father she barely knew provide a window into her interior life, and her growing realization about her feelings for Frank Tucker add just enough romance to season the mix. This may be one of those instances where the advance hype for a book is merited. --Jane Adams

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